practicing mise en place

When life gives you kumquats…

…make a salad! Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” but that is quite literally what I did the other day, instead of simply snacking on these delightful little fruits.

I love the orderly chaos that is the kitchen. Unlike life’s chaos, there is a method to the madness: all the chopping, slicing, dicing, sauteeing, simmering, roasting, and basting ultimately comes together to make a cohesive dish, with all its disparate components somehow harmonized.

For dinner the other night, I made a riff on Plenty More‘s Celery Salad with Feta and Soft-Boiled Egg, using instead my beloved kumquats. So simple and satisfying. And so therapeutic, to shift my focus to slicing everything as thinly and uniformly as I could.

Celery Salad with Feta, Kumquats, and Soft-Boiled Egg(serves 2 as a light dinner or side salad)

After slicing celery, green peppers, and onion thinly, place in a bowl, sprinkle with sugar and 1/4 tsp salt, and mix well. Set aside for 30 minutes to allow the vegetables to soften and to draw out some of the juices, which will comprise part of the dressing.

Add the kumquats, celery leaves, parsley, cilantro, capers, chiles, and olive oil to the softened vegetables. Mix gently to combine. Season lightly with salt and pepper to taste.

Just before serving, carefully spoon eggs into a saucepan of boiling water and simmer gently for 6 minutes. Run under cold water until the eggs are just cool enough to handle but still warm, then peel gently; the yolk should still be runny.

Arrange the salad on individual plates, dot each with feta, and place a soft-boiled egg on top, broken in the middle. Finish with a few drops of olive oil and freshly ground pepper and serve at once.